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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23046226">A Study in Red</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/EradiKate/pseuds/EradiKate'>EradiKate</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Scarlet Band [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age II</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Horror, F/M, Graphic Description</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 16:20:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>516</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23046226</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/EradiKate/pseuds/EradiKate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate ending for Dragon Age 2 (and an AU for Charlotte and Fenris).  Written as a prompt for the Dragon Age Writing Circle.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fenris/Female Hawke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Scarlet Band [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555672</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Study in Red</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The embers of Kirkwall’s chantry are still falling from the sky, stinging the mud of the Gallows courtyard.  Each impacts with a hiss, raising a chorus of sinister whispers that surround the Knight, the Enchanter, and the Champion.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Fenris lies on his side, breathing labored while Aveline ties off...something.  His leg, he suspects. He cannot feel anything more than the rough stone, sticky with blood against his jaw.  Varric is just beyond the gates, shepherding away the youngest apprentices in Bethany’s care. He knows Isabela is waiting for them, but he’s no longer at all certain any of them will live past this night.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He may not die, but if Hawke is not there tomorrow, it will have been for naught.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She is wounded--they all are, and the gangrenous rot of the city has poisoned each of them.  They may burn it behind them as much as they like, the infection has taken root. Meredith, petrifying into corrupt crimson.  Orsino, covered in dried blood that’s flaking away like rust. Hawke.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hawke defeated Danarius, he thinks wildly.  Hawke will walk away from this, too. He still cannot force his words to come.  Aveline says something to him, but it doesn’t register. Sensation is returning, though it’s only in flashes, one of which is a vermilion lance of pain.  Her face, strong even under blotchy skin and singed hair, comes in and out of focus. Fenris tries to speak, tries to answer her, but the skin at the corners of his mouth is cracking and Aveline’s pinched expression tells him everything.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Save yourself, he wills her, and perhaps something of it can be seen despite the rictus he’s sure he wears.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s a gentle patter now, rather than hissing, and he realizes that a summer rain is falling.  It will slow the fires and clear the muck of blood and ash away. It’s too late to stop the destruction, and he knows better than to think it will do more than reveal the damage.  The pitiless sun tomorrow will bleach the flayed-open heart of the city.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It does, however, muffle the sound of Hawke’s scream.  Even so, he recognizes it not as the keen of an injury, something he hears in nightmares.  It is a fierce, desperate, defiant cry, and Hawke’s voice vaults through the bloodshot haze he’s caught in and he thinks it might be her version of prayer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She screams again, shorter, heavier, and sharper.  Splinters of the lyrium that once was Meredith fly.  Shards lodge in Hawke’s face as she whirls, bright scarlet dripping from Malcolm’s blade and sheeting over her face.  Orsino is withered, blackened, skin split to reveal sickened and knotted flesh. Blood mage or not, his wounds have done for him.  But as though she is possessed herself, Hawke buries the edge in his throat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The silence that falls presses down on them, hardly ten yards apart though separated by something insurmountable now.  Orsino’s faint gurgles serve only to emphasize the futility of reaching out, but Fenris tries anyway. He calls her name.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Charlotte Hawke’s last words are “fucking Kirkwall.”</span>
</p>
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